Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy

Schmidt Number: S-4479

On-line since: 15th March, 2010

LECTURE XDornach, April 29, 1921

In recent
days, we have dealt with the development of European
civilization and we shall try to add a number of
considerations to what has been said. In this, it is always
our intention to bring about an understanding of what plays
into human life in the present age from the most diverse
directions and leads to comprehension of the tasks posed by
our time.

When you look
at individual human life, it can indeed give you a picture of
mankind's development. Nevertheless, you must naturally take
into consideration here what has been mentioned in regard to
the differences between the development of the individual and
the overall development of humanity. I have repeatedly called
attention to the fact that whereas the individual gets older
and older, mankind as a whole becomes younger and younger,
advancing, as it were, to the experience of younger periods
of life. While keeping in mind that in this regard the life
of the whole human community and that of the individual are
direct opposites, at least for the sake of clarification, we
can still say that individual human life can be a picture for
us of the life of all humanity. If we then view the single
human life in this way, we find that a quite specific sum of
experiences belongs with each period of life. We cannot teach
a six year-old child something we can teach a
twelve-year-old; in turn, we cannot expect that the
twelve-year-old approaches things with the same comprehension
as a twenty-year-old. In a sense, the human being has to grow
into what is compatible with individual periods in life. It
is the same in the case of humanity as a whole.

True, the
individual cultural epochs we have to point out based on
insight into humanity's evolution — the old Indian, the
old Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean, the Greco-Roman epoch and
then the one to which we ourselves belong — have quite
specific cultural contents and the whole of mankind has to
grow into them. But just as the individual can fall behind
his potential of development, so certain segments of mankind
can do the same. This is a phenomenon that must be taken into
consideration, particularly in our age, since humanity is now
moving into the evolutionary state of freedom. It is,
therefore, left up to mankind itself to find its way into
what this and the following epoch put forward. It is, as it
were, left up to human discretion to remain behind what is
posed as goals. If an individual lags behind in this regard,
he is confronted by others who do find their way properly
into their tasks of evolution. They then have to carry him
along, in a manner of speaking. Yet, in a certain sense, this
can frequently signify a somewhat unpleasant destiny for such
a person when he has to become aware that in a certain way he
remains behind the others who do arrive at the goal of
evolution.

This can also
take place in the life of nations. It is possible that some
nations achieve the goal and that others remain behind. As we
have seen, the goals of the various nations also differ from
each other. First of all, if one nation attains its goal and
the other falls short of what it is supposed to accomplish,
then something is lost that could only have been achieved by
this laggard nation. On the other hand, this backsliding
nation will adopt much that is really not suitable for it. It
appropriates contents it receives by imitating other nations
that do attain their goal. Such things do take place in the
evolution of mankind, and it is of particular significance
for the present age to pay attention to them.

Today, we
shall summarize a number of things, familiar to us from other
aspects, and throw light on them from a certain standpoint.
We know that the time from the eighth pre-Christian century
until the fifteenth century
A.D.
is the time of the
development of the intellectual or rational soul among the
civilized part of humanity. This development of the
intellectual or rational soul begins in the eighth
pre-Christian century in southern Europe and Asia Minor. We
can trace it when we focus upon the beginnings of the
historical development of the Greek people. The Greeks still
possess much of what can be termed the development of the
sentient soul that was particularly suited to the third
post-Atlantean age, the Egypto-Chaldean epoch. That whole
period was devoted to the development of the sentient
soul.

During those
times, human beings surrendered to the impressions of the
external world, and through these impressions of the outer
world they received at the same time everything they then
valued as insights and that they let flow into the impulses
of their will. With all their being people were in a
condition where they experienced themselves as members of the
whole cosmos. They questioned the stars and their movements
when it was a matter of deciding what to do, and so on. This
experiencing of the surrounding world, this seeing of the
spiritual in all details of the outer world, was the
distinguishing feature of the Egyptians at the height of
their culture. This is what existed in Asia Minor and enjoyed
a second flowering among the Greeks. The ancient Greeks
certainly possessed this faculty of free surrender to the
outer surroundings, and this was connected with a perception
of the elemental spirit beings within the outer
phenomena.

Then,
however, something developed among the Greeks, which Greek
philosophers call “nous,” namely, a general world
intellect. This then remained the fundamental quality of
human soul developments until the fifteenth century. It
attained a kind of high point in the fourth Christian century
and then diminished again. But this whole development from
the eighth pre-Christian century up until the fifteenth
century actually developed the intellect. However, if we
speak of “intellect” in this period, we really
have to disregard what we term “intellect” in our
present age. For us, the intellect is something we carry
within ourselves, something we develop within ourselves, by
virtue of which we comprehend the world. This was not so in
the case of the Greeks, and it was still not so in the
eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, when people
spoke about the intellect. Intellect was something objective;
the intellect was an element that filled the world. The
intellect arranged the individual world phenomena. People
observed the world and its phenomena and told themselves: It
is the universal intellect that makes one phenomenon follow
the other, places the individual phenomena into a
greater totality, and so forth. People attributed to the
human brain no more than the fact that it shared in this
general universal intelligence.

When we work
out of modern physics and physiology and speak about light,
we say that the light is within us. But even in his naive
mind nobody would believe that light is only in our heads.
Just as little as today's naive consciousness claims that it
is dark outside and light exists only in the human head would
a Greek or even a person of the eleventh or twelfth century
have said that the intellect was only in his head. Such a
person said, The intellect is outside, permeating the world
and bestowing order on everything. Just as the human being
becomes aware of light owing to his perceptions, so he
becomes aware of the intellect. The intellect lights up in
him, so to speak.

Something
important was connected with this emergence of cosmic
intelligence within the human cultural development. Earlier,
when the cultural development ran its course under the
influence of the sentient soul, people did not refer to a
uniform principle encompassing the whole world. They spoke of
the spirits of plants, of spirits that regulate the animal
kingdom, of water spirits and spirits of the air, and so on.
People referred to a multitude of spiritual entities. It was
not merely polytheism, the folk religion, that spoke of this
multitude. Even in those who were initiates, the awareness
was definitely present that they were dealing with a
multitude of actual beings in the world outside. Due to the
dawn of the rational soul age, a sort of monism developed.
Reason was viewed as something uniform that enveloped the
whole world. It was not until then that the monotheistic
character of religion developed, although a preliminary stage
of it existed in the third post-Atlantean epoch. But what we
should record scientifically concerning this era — from
the eighth pre-Christian to the fifteenth century
A.D.
— is the fact that it is the period of the developing
world intellect and that people had quite different thoughts
about the intellect than we have nowadays.

Why did
people think so differently about the intellect? People
thought differently about the intellect because they
also felt differently when they tried to grasp something by
means of their intellect. People went through the world and
perceived objects through their senses; but when they thought
about them, they always experienced a kind of jolt. When they
thought about something, it was as if they were experiencing
a stronger awakening than they sensed in the process of
ordinary waking. Thinking about something was a process still
experienced as different from ordinary life. Above all, when
people thought about something, they felt that they were
involved in a process that was objective, not merely
subjective. Even as late as the fifteenth century — and
in its aftereffect even in still later times — people
had a certain feeling in regard to the more profound thinking
about things, a feeling people today do not have anymore.
Nowadays human beings do not have the feeling that thinking
about something should be carried out in a certain mood of
soul. Up until the fifteenth century, people had the feeling
that they produced only something evil if they were not
morally good and yet engaged in thinking. In a sense, they
reproached themselves for thinking even though they were bad
persons. This is something we no longer experience properly.
Nowadays people believe, In my soul I can be as bad as I want
to be, but I can engage in thinking. Up to the fifteenth
century, people did not believe that. They actually felt that
it was a kind of insult to the divine cosmic intelligence to
think about something while in an immoral soul condition.
Hence, already in the act of thinking, they saw something
real; in a manner of speaking, they viewed themselves as
submerged with their soul in the overall cosmic
intellect.

What was the
reason for that? This came about because in this period from
the eighth pre-Christian century to the fifteenth century
A.D.,
and particularly in the fourth century, human beings
predominantly employed their etheric body when they engaged
in thinking. It was not that they decided to activate the
ether body. But what they did sense — their whole soul
mood — brought the etheric body into movement when
thinking occurred. We can almost say: During that age, human
beings thought with their etheric body. And the
characteristic thing is that in the fifteenth century people
began to think with their physical bodies. When we think, we
do so with the forces the etheric body sends into the
physical body. This is the great difference that becomes
evident when we look at thinking before and after the
fifteenth century. When we look at thinking prior to that
time, it runs its course in the etheric body (see drawing,
light-shaded crosshatching); in a sense, it gives the etheric
body a certain structure. If we look at thinking now, it runs
its course in the physical body (dark). Each such line of the
ether body calls forth a replica of itself, and this replica
is then found in the physical body.

Since that
time, what occurs in human beings when they think is, as it
were, an impression of the etheric activity as though of a
seal on the physical body. The development from the fifteenth
to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was mainly that
human beings increasingly have taken their thinking out of
the etheric body, that they adhere to this shadow image
brought about in the physical body by the actual thought
impulses originating in the etheric body. We therefore deal
with the fact that in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch people
really think with the physical body but that this is merely a
shadow image of what was once cosmic thinking; hence, since
that time, only a shadow image of cosmic thinking dwells in
mankind.

You see,
everything that has developed since the fifteenth century,
all that developed as mathematics, as modern natural science
and so on, is fundamentally a shadow image, a specter of
former thinking; it no longer contains any life. People today
actually have no idea of how much more alive an element
thinking was in former times. In those ancient days, the
human being actually felt refreshed while thinking. He was
glad when he could think, for thinking was a refreshment of
soul for him. In that age, the concept did not exist that
thinking could also be something tiring. Human beings could
become tired out by something else, but when they could truly
think, they experienced this as a refreshment, an
invigoration for the soul; when they could live in thoughts,
they also experienced something of a sense of grace bestowed
on them.

Now, this
transition in the soul condition has occurred. In what
appears as thinking in modern times, we are confronted with
something shadowy. This is the reason for the difficulty in
motivating a human being to any action through thinking
— if I may put it like this. One can tell people all
sorts of things based on thinking, but they will not feel
inspired. Yet this is the very thing they must learn. Human
beings must become aware of the fact that they possess shadow
images in their current thinking. They have to realize that
it must not be allowed to remain thus; that this shadow
image, i.e. modern thinking, has to be enlivened so that it
can turn into Imagination. It becomes evident, for example,
in such books as my
Theosophy
or my
An Outline of Occult Science
that the attempt is always made to
change modern thinking into Imagination, that pictures are
driven everywhere into our thinking so that thinking can be
aroused to Imagination, hence, to life. Otherwise, humanity
would be laid waste completely. We can disseminate arid
scholarliness far and wide, but this dry scholarliness will
not become inflamed and rouse itself to will-filled action,
if Imaginative life does not once more enter into this
shadowy thinking, this ghost of thinking which has invaded
mankind in recent times.

This is
indeed the profound and fateful challenge for modern
civilization, namely, that we should realize that, on the one
hand, thinking tends to become a shadowy element into which
human beings increasingly withdraw and that, on the other
hand, what passes over into the will actually turns only into
a form of surrender to human instincts. The less thinking is
capable of taking in Imagination, the more will the full
interest of what lives outside in society be abandoned to the
instincts. Humanity of former times, at least in the epochs
that bore the stamp of civilization — you have been
able to deduce that from the previous lectures —
possessed something, out of the whole human organism that was
spiritual. Modern human beings only receive something
spiritual from their heads; in regard to their will, they
thus surrender to their impulses and instincts. The great
danger is that human beings turn more and more into purely
head-oriented creatures, that in regard to acting in the
outer world out of their will, they abandon themselves to
their instincts. This then naturally leads to the social
conditions that are now spreading in the East of Europe
[1]
and also infect us here everywhere. This comes about because
thinking has become but a shadow image. One cannot stress these
things often enough.

It is on the
basis of precisely such profound insight that the significant
strivings of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science
will be understood. Its aim is the shadow image once again
become a living being, so that something will be available
again to mankind that can take hold of the whole human being.
This, however, cannot take place if thinking remains a shadow
image, if Imaginations do not enter into this thinking once
more. Numbers, for example, will have to be imbued again with
life in the way I outlined when I pointed to the sevenfold
human being, who is actually a nine-membered being, where the
second and the third, the sixth and the seventh parts unite
in such a way as to become in each case a unity, and where
seven is arrived at when one sums up the nine parts. It is
this inner involvement of what was once bestowed on man from
within that must be striven for. We have to take very
seriously what is characterized in this regard by
anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

From a
different direction, an awareness came about of the fact that
thinking is becoming shadow like; for that reason, a method
was created in Jesuitism that from a certain aspect, brings
life into this thinking. The Jesuit exercises are designed to
bring life into this thinking. But they accomplish this by
renewing an ancient form of life, above all, not by moving in
the direction of and working through Imagination, but through
the will, which particularly in Jesuit exercises plays an
important role. We should realize — yet realize it far
too little — how in a community such as the Jesuit
order all aspects of the life of soul become something
radically different from what is true of ordinary people.
Basically, all other human beings of the present possess a
different condition of soul than those who become Jesuits.
The Jesuits work out of a world will; that cannot be denied.
Consequently, they are aware of certain existing
interrelationships; at most, such interrelationships are
noticed also by some other orders that in turn are fought
tooth and nail by the Jesuits. But it is this significant
element whereby reality enters into the shadowy thinking that
turns a Jesuit into a different kind of person from the
others in our modern civilization. These think merely in
shadow images and therefore are actually asleep mentally,
since thinking no longer takes hold of their organism and
does not really permeate their nervous system.

Nobody, I
believe, has ever seen a gifted Jesuit who is nervous,
whereas those imbued with modern scholarliness and education
increasingly suffer from nervousness. When do we become
nervous? When the physical nerves make themselves felt.
Something then makes itself felt that, from a physical
standpoint, has no right at all to make itself felt, for it
exists merely to transmit the spiritual. These matters are
intimately connected with the wrongness of our modern
education. And from a certain standpoint of imbuing thinking
with life — a standpoint we must nevertheless definitely
oppose — Jesuitism is something that goes along with
the world, even though, like a crab, it goes backwards. But
at least it moves, it does not stand still, whereas the form
of science in vogue today basically does not comprehend the
human being at all.

Here, I would
like to draw your attention to something. I have already
mentioned repeatedly that it is actually painful to witness
again and again that modern human beings, who can think all
sorts of things and are so very clever, do not stand in a
living manner with a single fiber of their lives in the
present age, that they do not see what is going on around
them, indeed, that they are unaware of what is happening
around them and do not wish to participate in it. That is
different in the case of the Jesuit. The Jesuit who activates
his whole being is well aware of what vibrates through the
world today. As evidence, I would like to read to you a few
lines from a current Jesuit pamphlet from which you can
deduce what sort of life pulsates in it:

For all
those who are serious about the fundamental Christian
principles, those to whom the welfare of the people is
truly a concern of the heart, whose soul was once
profoundly touched by the words of the Savior,
“Miseror super turbam,”
[2]
for all those the time has now come when,
borne by the ground swell of the Bolshevist storm tide,
they can work with much greater success for the people and
with the people. There is no room for timidity. Hence, as a
matter of policy, we advocate the all out struggle against
“capitalism,” against the exploitation of the
people and profiteering at their expense, stricter emphasis
on the duty to work even for the higher classes, the
procurement of decent housing for millions of fellow
citizens, even if such procurement necessitates making use
of palaces and larger houses, utilization of natural
resources and energy gained from water and air for the
general welfare, not for trusts and syndicates, enhancement
and education of the masses of people, participation by all
segments of the people in government and administration,
utilization of the concept of the system of soviets for the
purpose of developing class representation having equal
rights alongside parliamentary mass representation in order
to prevent “the isolation of the masses from the
state apparatus” as censured justifiably by Lenin ...
God has given the goods of the earth to all human beings,
not to a few so they can live on the fat of the land while
millions languish in poverty, which is degrading both
physically and morally ...
[Note 1]

You see, this
is the fiery mind that does sense something of what is
happening. Here is a person who, in the rest of his book,
sternly opposes Bolshevism and naturally wishes to have
nothing to do with it. But, unlike somebody who has made
himself comfortable in a chair today and is oblivious to the
conflagration in the world all around him, he does not remain
in such a position. Instead, he is aware of what is happening
and knows what he wants because he sees what is going on.

People have
gone so far as to merely think about the affairs of the
world, and otherwise let things run their course. This is
what has to be stressed again and again, namely, that the
human being has more in him than mere thoughts with which to
think about things while really not paying attention to the
world's essential nature. As an example we need only indicate
the Theosophical Society. It points to the great initiates
who exist somewhere, and indeed, it can do so with
justification. But it is not a matter of the initiates'
existence; what is important is the manner in which those who
refer to them speak of them. Theosophists imagine that the
great initiates rule the world; in turn, they themselves sit
down and produce good thoughts, which they let stream out in
all directions. Then they talk of world rule, of world
epochs, of world impulses. However, when the point is reached
where something real, such as anthroposophy, has to live
within the actual course of world events because it could not
be otherwise, people find that uncomfortable since then they
cannot really remain sitting on their chairs but have to
experience what goes on in the world.

It must be
strongly emphasized that the intellect has turned into a
shadow in humanity, that it was earlier experienced in the
etheric body and has now slipped, so to speak, into the
physical body where it leads only a subjective existence.
However, it can be brought to life through Imagination. Then
it leads to the consciousness soul, and this consciousness
soul can be grasped as a reality only when it senses the ego
descends out of soul-spiritual worlds into incarnation and
then passes through the gate of death into soul-spiritual
worlds. When this inner soul-spiritual nature of the ego is
comprehended, then the shadow image of the intellect can in
fact be filled with reality. For it is through the ego that
this has to be accomplished.

It is
necessary to realize that living thinking exists. For what is
it that people know since the fifteenth century? They know
only logical thinking, not living thinking. This, too, I have
pointed out repeatedly. What is living thinking? I shall take
an example close at hand. In 1892, I wrote the
The Philosophy of Freedom.
This book has a certain content. In 1903, I wrote
Theosophy;
again, it has a certain content. In
Theosophy,
mention is made of the etheric body, the astral body, and so on. In
Philosophy of Freedom,
there is no mention of that. Now those who are only familiar
with the logical, dead thinking come and say, Yes, I read the
Philosophy of Freedom;
from it, I cannot extract any
concept of the etheric and astral body; it is impossible; I
cannot find these concepts from the concepts contained in the
book. But this is the same as if I were to take a small,
five-year-old boy and fashioned him into a man of sixty by
pulling him upwards and sideways to make him taller and
wider!

I cannot put
a mechanical, lifeless process in place of something living.
But picture the
Philosophy of Freedom
as something
alive — which indeed it is — and then imagine it
growing. From it, then develops what only a person who tries
to cull or pick out something from concepts will not figure
out. All objections concerning contradictions are based on
just this, namely, that people cannot understand the nature
of living thinking as opposed to the dead thinking that
dominates the whole world and all of civilization today. In
the world of living things, everything develops from within,
A formerly black-haired person who has white hair has
acquired the latter not because the hair has been painted
white; it has turned white from within. Things that grow and
wane develop from within, and so it is also in the case of
living thinking. Yet, today, people sit down and merely try
to form conclusions, try to sense outward logic. What is
logic? Logic is the anatomy of thinking, and one studies
anatomy by means of corpses. Logic is acquired through the
study of the corpse of thinking. It is certainly justified to
study anatomy by means of corpses. It is just as justified to
study logic through the corpses of thinking. But one will
never comprehend life by means of what has been observed on
the corpse!

This is what
is important today and what really matters if we wish with
all our soul to take part in a living way in what actually
permeates and weaves through the world. This side of the
matter has to be pointed out again and again, because insofar
as the positive world development and evolution of mankind
are concerned, we need to invigorate a thinking that has
become shadowy. This process of thinking becoming shadow-like
reached its culmination in the middle of the nineteenth.
century. For that reason, the things that, so to say,
beguiled humanity most of them fall into that period.
Although in themselves these things were not great, if placed
in the right location, they appear great.

Take the end
of the 1850's. Darwin's
Origin of the Species,
[Note 2]
Karl Marx's
The Principles of Political Economy,
[Note 3]
as well as
Psycho-Physics
by Gustav Theodor Fechner,
[Note 4]
a work in which the attempt is made to discover the psychic
sphere by means of outward experiments, were published then.
In the same year, the captivating discovery of spectral
analysis by Kirchhoff
[Note 5]
and Bunsen
[Note 6]
is introduced; it
demonstrates, as it were, that wherever one looks in the
universe the same materiality is discovered. It is as if
everything were being done in the middle of the nineteenth
century to beguile human beings into believing that thinking
must remain subjective and shadow-like, that it must not
interfere in the world outside so that they could not
possibly imagine that there might be reason, nous, in the
cosmos, something that lives in the cosmos itself.

This is what
caused this second half of the nineteenth century to be so
unphilosophical. Basically, this is also what made it so
devoid of deeds. This is what caused the economic
relationships to become more and more complicated while
commerce became enlarged into a world economy so that the
whole earth in fact turned into one economic sphere, and
particularly this shadow-like thinking was unable to grasp
the increasingly complex and overwhelming reality. This is
the tragedy of our modern age. The economic conditions have
become more and more complex, weighty, and increasingly
brutal; human thinking remained shadowy, and these shadows
certainly could no longer penetrate into what goes on outside
in the brutal economic reality.

This is what
causes our present misery. Unfortunately, if a person
actually believes that he is more delicately organized and
has need of the spirit, he may possibly get into the habit of
making a long face, of speaking in a falsetto voice and of
talking about the fact that he has to elevate himself from
brutal reality, since the spiritual basically can be grasped
only in the mystical realm. Thinking has become so refined
that it has to withdraw from reality, that it perishes right
away in its shadowy existence if it tries to penetrate brutal
reality. Reality in the meantime develops below in conformity
with the instincts; it proliferates and brutalizes. Up above,
we see the bloated ideas of mysticism, of world views and
theosophies floating about; below, life brutally takes its
course. This is something that must stop for the sake of
mankind. Thinking must be enlivened; thought has to become so
powerful that it need not withdraw from brutal reality but
can enter into it, can live in it as spirit. Then reality
will no longer be brutal. This has to be understood.

What is not
yet understood in many different respects is that a thinking
in which universal being dwells cannot but pour its force
over everything. This should be something that goes without
saying. But it appears as a sacrilege to this modern thinking
if a form of thinking appears on the scene that cannot help
but extend to all different areas. A properly serious
attitude in life should be comprised of the realization: In
thinking, we have been dealing with a shadow image, and
rightly so, but the age has now arrived when life must be
brought once again into this shadow image of thought in order
that from this form of thought life, from this inner life of
soul, the outer physical, sensory life can receive its social
stimulus.